One, possibly two, more tabs - one for tracking volunteer hours; one for tracking income and expenses. Most of our "income" is in the form of donated assets and in-kind services. We do operate a vegetable stand where folks make donations for the produce they purchase and sell about 1/3 of our harvest - the other 2/3 goes to food banks.

I would also like to be able to track pounds sent to food banks v pounds sold.

I'm setting us up to apply for a rather large grant for the next growing season to either negotiate a long term land lease or purchase more land. Our 5 year plan for this garden is to add at least two more (remote) sites so I need to keep very strict records to show the impact on our area we have with just one garden.

_________________Life without a garden just wouldn't be any fun at all.

In the near term I have added a cost feature to the log report.
While I think this will help you, it probably won't be quite enough.

If others are interested in this type of feature let me know.
I know of several small farms that use Plangarden, so there may be more people out there that need more features like this.

Thanks for all your great ideas and comments.
They really won't get lost or disregarded. It just may take time to get to them. Some like this may need other people to help drive it.
Honestly, Plangarden is software that is driven by users.

I too would like to see more tabs for tracking purposes. Indeed one of the reasons I didn't use plangarden towards the end of last year was that I felt frustrated that I was wasn't able to record everything I would liked.

Financial Values

My ideal would to be able to have a financial value amount when recording planting - (i.e., as well as an "amount planted", a momentary value too, so to be able to say I planted half a packed of seed, the value of the seed being £$ 0.50).

To go with that I'd like "harvest" option of a financial amount (i.e., to be able to say not a weight of veg, but a momentary value) and to be able to keep a running total for each vegetable.

Then it would be possible to see that, for example, I planted half a packet of "flyaway" carrots, value, £1.20, and harvested, for example £20 worth. This would give an idea of whether it were worth planting more expensive seed.

Other outlay

There's also a use to be able to record financial values of other things bought - tools, etc, but can't see how that would work with the aboe.

Germination dates

Would it be possible to record germinates dates of seeds planted? I realise this could be done in the daily log, but it would be more useful to be able to see it along with the planting date on the plan.

Hours

Unlike thegardenlady I don't need to record hours by others ... but it would be interesting to record my own (Or perhaps not ... or I'd work out each meal was worth it's weight in gold if I factored in my time!).

I accept this wanting to use Plangarden as spreadsheet, rather than a planning tool. But thought it worth asking

I like the idea of a tab for tracking costs and income Roy. This will be the second year of working 2 local farmers markets and even though I have a spreadsheet, having this confined within Plangarden would be fantastic!!

If all goes well this year, which I'm sure it will, we'll be branching out to the DC/Baltimore, Annapolis farmers markets. Then I could track travel expenses also.

Quote:

Other outlay

There's also a use to be able to record financial values of other things bought - tools, etc, but can't see how that would work with the aboe.

Since we operate basically on donations and grants, the grant people always want to know where the dollars are going (when writing the grant) and where they have gone (when doing end of grant year reports).

Right now this is all done in excel spreadsheets but it would be so much easier just to have it all in one place.

Another thing I do is similar to gothgardiner, I work out dollar figures at the end of harvest. Ex: We sent 300 pounds of tomatoes to food bank @ (average grocery store price) = "x" dollars showing how we were able to alleviate some of the financial stress on the foodbanks who have to purchase from the central foodbank authority.

_________________Life without a garden just wouldn't be any fun at all.

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